More thoughts on audiences and new music
Earlier this month a fascinating article appeared in the New York Times entitled “How Do You Teach People to Love Difficult Music”. Making an example of one of my favourite composers, György Ligeti, it outlines a problem familiar to many musicians: how do we share our love of something that is really complicated, but also fascinating, thrilling and beautiful. So often audiences hear only the complicated, developing an aversion to anything written after 1900. The author, Ryan Ebright, argues that we tend to make the mistake of trying to describe how the music works technically instead of focusing on what inspired it. For example, Ligeti’s music may be extraordinarily dense and sticky, but it’s frequently inspired by familiar, relatable things: “We hear his childhood amid the